1. Field of the Invention
The present invention provides a multi-view autostereoscopic display, and more particularly, to a multi-view autostereoscopic display that combines the time-multiplexing technology and the multiple-projector technology together.
2. Descriptions of the Related Art
According to visual characteristics of human eyes, when two eyes of a human being are watching a same image at the same time, images seen by the two eyes are slightly different because of the spacing of about 65 mm between the two eyes. Thus, a three-dimensional (3D) image is obtained. The 3D displaying technologies may be categorized into stereoscopic displaying technologies and autostereoscopic displaying technologies. According to the ways of imaging, the autostereoscopic displaying technologies are further divided into the spatial-multiplexing autostereoscopic displaying technology, the multiple-projector autostereoscopic displaying technology and the time-multiplexing autostereoscopic displaying technology.
The conventional spatial-multiplexing autostereoscopic displaying technology utilizes a parallax barrier or lenticular to control traveling directions of light rays and to project images of different viewing angles to different spatial positions and further to the left and the right eyes, thus generating a 3D image. However, because the image is divided into a left-eye image and a right-eye image, both brightness and resolution of the images are decreased.
In order to maintain the resolution of the images, the multiple-projector autostereoscopic displaying technology and the time-multiplexing autostereoscopic displaying technology are often used. With reference to FIG. 1, a conventional multi-projector autostereoscopic displaying system 1 comprises a plurality of projectors 11 arranged in an array. Images are projected by the projectors 11 to split visual fields 13 at different positions in one-to-one correspondence, and then the different images will be seen by the left eye and the right eye respectively to achieve an autostereoscopic displaying effect. As the viewing angles increase, the number of projectors required is increased and the projection distance is also extended. Consequently, the space needed becomes larger and the cost becomes higher.
With reference to FIG. 2, the time-multiplexing projection apparatus 2 employs a set of directional backlights 21 in combination with a rapid-response panel 23 to sequentially display a left-eye image 25 and a right-eye image 27. In this way, different images will be seen by the left eye and the right eye of the viewer and then combined to form an autostereoscopic image. As the left-eye image 25 and the right-eye image 27 must be processed within one frame period, the frame updating frequency of the projection apparatus must be increased and the number of light sources in the projection apparatus becomes a focus of the design. However, because the displaying region is relatively small, this kind of projection apparatus is usually applicable to small display devices.
Accordingly, it is important to provide a novel multi-view autostereoscopic display.